Anyone you know left after a year? How are they doing?
~2 months on the desk, realizing that I’m probably gonna leave after my first bonus.
don’t think client service / deal based work is something i enjoy and looking at the lives of literally anyone more senior than me, i do not envy their lives whatsoever. On top of that my firm is known to pay awful bonuses so comp cant even be really motivating factor (pretty sure most my 2nd years got 30-50k despite steady state 85+ hours)
However my seat is great name wise so hoping that i’ll have a range of opps available. Low chance that buyside is something i’ll pursue unless it’s LMM/FoF/Secondaries. Open to pivoting from finance as a whole tbh. I just want to find purpose either in enjoying life or in a job that i can believe in (doesn’t have to be a passion but just fulfilling to some degree ideally)
Would love to hear what people have seen people pivot to after year, are people happier or does the grass just look greener?
Do it, left to startup after 1.5yrs, IB not worth it at all. Go live your life and take some real equity risk now whilst you have time on your side
any advice on how to find a good startup to work for? and what does the long term plan look like for you right now in the startup space, is that something that’s always changing for you?
It’s quite tricky, really depends on your level of knowledge in the sector which you choose to pursue. Would take a close look at the founder/employee background, networking etc. it is a real risk at the end of the day so you will be taking a leap either way. I joined right after series A and luckily we have done very well and I can see myself here for a while as we scale and hopefully reach liquidity. If it doesn’t work out, will most likely return to school for a masters or leverage startup operational experience for growth equity or VC.
yeah that makes sense, definitely would be hesitant to take any random startup offer if i went down that route. Do you still then work in a finance capacity like strategic finance or something? Curious what other functions would be open to ex-IB. Also did joining at that stage mean you took a big discount comp wise at first?
No I work in a purely operational role. No financial modelling whatsoever. With the level of excel knowledge you will develop, you can easily pivot to a strategy, sales, revenue growth, supply chain role and do well if you learn the concepts because you will have the framework of building models down. In terms of comp that is correct, you will most likely take a pay cut from the vanilla IB route. That is when you have to decide whether the equity offering + improved lifestyle is worth the opportunity cost of leaving the easily predictable path of Wall Street banking despite the miserable life it requires for the risk free return.
I remember two kids in my analyst class left i) Left for a SM HF (not sure how they swung that) and seemingly is still in the same firm 6-7 years later so must be doing pretty good for themselves ii) Left for a startup that didn't work out so is seems like is now just bouncing around different GTM/operations sales role in pretty B/C Tier startups.
Most people that went into other more traditional finance (even HF) all did two years of banking before making the move
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